He looked from Howard to Maude, then, he said: "Howard, I want you to congratulate me.

Miss Falconer--Maude--has promised to be my wife." Howard did not start, but he stared in silence for an instant, then his eyelids flickered, and forcing the astonishment from his face, he took Stafford's left hand and shook it, and bowed to Maude.
"I do congratulate you with all my heart, my dear Stafford, and I hope you'll both be as happy as the happiest pair in a fairy story." She drew her arm from Stafford's.
"I will go up now," she said.

"Good-night!" Stafford stood until she had got as far as the bend of the stairs; then Howard, who had discreetly gone on, turned to go back to him.

But as he came up with a word of wonder and repeated congratulations, he saw Stafford put his hand to his forehead, and, as it seemed to Howard, almost stagger.
There are moments when the part of even one's best friend is silence, blindness.

Howard turned aside, and Stafford went on slowly, with a kind of enforced steadiness, to the billiard-room.